Friday, August 11, 2017

Why should anyone listen?

by Tom Sullivan

It is no secret that one of the president's favorite phrases is "a lot of people." He uses it to impart some factoid he heard five minutes earlier. Steve Benen:

It’s reminiscent of remarks Trump delivered in March when he said, in reference to Abraham Lincoln, “Most people don’t even know he was a Republican. Right? Does anyone know? A lot of people don’t know that.”

Referring to the president as “Captain Obvious,” the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted soon after just how frequently Trump reflects on what he assumes others don’t know.

That Bill Clinton signed NAFTA: “A lot of people don’t know that.”

What a value-added tax is: “A lot of people don’t know what that means.”

That we have a trade deficit with Mexico: “People don’t know that.”

That Iraq has large oil reserves: “People don’t know this about Iraq.”

That war is expensive: “People don’t realize it is a very, very expensive process.”

Whether he thinks “people” are incredibly uninformed, or whether he’s simply oblivious himself, will remain a subject of some debate.

But another way Trump invokes "a lot of people" is to suggest there is popular support behind the smoke he is about to blow. After the Orlando nightclub shooting last year, for example, candidate Trump told reporters,

... President Obama either does not understand radicalized Muslim terrorists or “he gets it better than anybody understands.”

“Well,” Trump said on the “Today Show” Monday morning, “there are a lot of people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it. I happen to think that he just doesn’t know what he’s doing, but there are many people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. He doesn’t want to see what’s really happening. And that could be.”

This is Trump's idea of subtle.

Responding to criticism of his statements on Korea, Trump doubled down. He told reporters:

“Frankly, the people who were questioning that statement, was it too tough? Maybe it wasn’t tough enough,” he told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. “They’ve been doing this to our country for a long time, for many years, and it’s about time that somebody stuck up for the people of this country and for the people of other countries. So if anything, maybe that statement wasn’t tough enough.”

No doubt a lot of people are saying that.

It's just that, given that "a lot of people" don't seem to know what for the rest of us is common knowledge (like France being our first ally), why does Trump think we should take seriously what a lot of people who know so little are saying?< Much less him?br />
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